


achilles fasting, patroclus drunk

by sinta



Category: Wanna One (Band)
Genre: M/M, No angst just happiness, sequel to scorpio rising, the book thief au, woojin doesn't get drunk but he's just. drunk on love ig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 21:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12734718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinta/pseuds/sinta
Summary: The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy who loves you.





	achilles fasting, patroclus drunk

**Author's Note:**

> so!! here's the scorpio rising sequel some of u wanted .. but it's in no way in the scorpio rising verse;;; bc it didn't feel exactly right for me if woojin did set out for jihoon after scorpio rising but! here's a reincarnation au of sorts, bc i'm a hoe for reincarnation aus n also i couldn't seem to pass up the opportunity to write a book thief au bc woojin is such a rudy steiner my heart hurts
> 
> special thanks to reena and rosie for helping me, especially to rosie for beta-ing this fic <3 i love both of you lots

**memories of gazes this time carved in childish innocence**

Jihoon isn't entirely sure if he can get used to this.

The smiles of his new Mama and Papa are steely but filled with warmth, and it's so different from the small watery smiles his real mother gave him. He supposes it's from being stuck in the middle of war when a child is brought to them, new life even when everything is falling apart.

Jihoon is ten.

(He doesn't know of war, not quite yet; but soon enough, he will.)

There's a rapping of knuckles against the door. _One, two, three. One, two, three._

"Yah, what could that boy want?" Mama wipes her hands on the worn-down towel hanging by the stove and squeezes herself out of the tiny kitchen. 

Jihoon can't see who it is, and maybe Mama is blocking the person (a boy, Jihoon notes) on purpose, because he hears protests of, "but I just want to meet him!" met with Mama saying, "Won't your mama be looking for you? You'll meet him soon enough. Now go!" She waves him away. 

But the boy stands his ground. "Frau Hirsch, I would like to see him." Jihoon can hear the way he pouts through the lilt in his voice, a sound that pleads and could crumble all resolve—except for his Mama's. She puts her hands on her hips and starts lecturing the boy right there and then, 'you little rat' made to be affectionate despite her angry tone. The boy takes this opportunity to peek behind his Mama and give Jihoon a snaggle-toothed smile and a small wave. Jihoon can only blink in response, doe-eyed and stiff in his seat.

It's enough for the boy, because he cuts Mama short of her lecture with a bow and a "Thank you, Frau Hirsch, I'll see you soon!"

Jihoon smiles when Mama replies, "I'd rather you don't!"

,,,

He learns that Woojin is a force to be reckoned with.

Jihoon is shoved between two cans meant to be goalposts, because being labeled as _the new kid on the block_ means you take whatever shitty position the other kids want you to when you play soccer. It's faulty logic if Jihoon's ever heard one, but he's in no position to complain.

It's Jihoon's team versus Woojin's, and the game goes smoothly for a while, Jihoon catching and throwing and working his little legs through the muddy snow to move towards and away from the ball. As goalies should, he figures.

That is, until—

He's met with a faceful of ball, hitting him square on the nose and the sting _hurts_ , but Woojin only laughs.

"How do you like _that_?" The snaggletooth is peeking out from between his lips when he grins at Jihoon for the briefest of seconds, then he runs away to retrieve the ball.

"Yah!" Jihoon yells after him. "You filthy pig!"

It makes Woojin laugh, and Jihoon realizes it's all he needs.

,,,

A ball to the face appears to be Woojin's definition of a budding friendship.

Woojin knocks on their door on a school day, the same six taps on the thin wood that Jihoon knows all too well by now. Woojin has been knocking every day since the soccer game, greeting his Mama with a different reason every time. Sometimes it's "Mama wanted me to give this to you", or "Papa says he'd like to have a cigarette", or even "is Jihoon home?"

Papa only watches from the dining table, cigarette between his lips and newspaper in his hands.

("Woojin only makes excuses to see you," his Mama told him one night. "I've never seen the boy so persistent.")

Today, it's Papa who answers the door.

Jihoon watches as Woojin decides he doesn't need a strategy, because Papa is softer and gentler than Mama is. "Herr Hirsch," he starts. "I'd like to walk with Jihoon to school."

Papa turns around to face Jihoon sitting by the dining table, who looks away and carefully tugs at his new uniform. It's the second set of clothing Jihoon's received after arriving in his foster home, and he's scared that if he fidgets with it too much it'll tear apart at the seams.

"Jihoon?"

Jihoon pretends he doesn't know. "Yes, Papa?"

"Woojin would like to walk with you to school."

Jihoon takes his bag, a small suitcase with a few papers and pens inside (only what the Hirschs could afford), and passes underneath his Papa's arm to get to Woojin.

Woojin flashes him a smile, snaggletooth and all— _I'm sorry for kicking a ball at your face._

Jihoon smiles back, knowing and accepting— _It's okay._

Woojin takes him by the arm and doesn't let go until they're in front of the school.

,,,

The best things in life often come in threes, but Woojin begs to differ.

Jihoon notices Woojin always takes time to have just the both of them together, his nose scrunching up whenever his sisters tug at his arm and ask _pretty pretty please will Woojin let them walk with them to school_.

(Woojin lets them, anyway.)

His sisters don't tug at him today, so they're left with the quiet as they walk to school. It's a little awkward, a heart too small for the silence, a little unsure of whether Jihoon should say something. 

By the time Jihoon opens his mouth to speak, Woojin has beat him to it.

"Hey," Woojin says, smiling, snaggle-toothed. "Let's play a game."

Jihoon turns to look at him. "What kind?"

"A race. First one to the school wins."

"I bet you I'll win."

"A bet, huh? What are you betting? Money?"

Jihoon scoffs. "As if I've got any money on me."

"Okay," Woojin is full-on grinning. "How about, if I win, I get to kiss you."

"No!" Jihoon sputters. "Why would you want to kiss me, you ass?"

"Why not?"

Jihoon pauses, thinking. Inhales. "Fine." A beat. "But if I win, you do as I say for a week."

"But—"

"One."

"Jihoon."

"Two."

"Jihoon!"

Jihoon bends down and locks his limbs into position.

"Three," and he runs, feet kicking against dirty snow and pavement, Woojin yelling "You little _Saumensch_!" behind him, until Jihoon hears him running too, so he keeps kicking and his lungs feel like burning but he's got a head start and he's not backing down now.

Woojin catches up to him about a third into the race, and they shove and push and elbow each other when they near the school, limbs ramming into each other's sides when they skid to a stop by the school gate, all filthy.

"It's a draw," Jihoon says, breathless, tugging at his uniform again because he's dirty and he would get an earful when he gets home.

"We look like shit," but Woojin is smiling. "But do I still get my kiss?"

"Stick your kiss."

"Will you kiss me some other time?"

"Never."

\--

**i think a hummingbird is trapped in my ribcage**

The bombs start to drop when Jihoon is sixteen.

It shakes him inside out and the explosions rattle all the little bones in his ears, but he never lets it get to him, instead choosing to stay in the basements where they go for shelter, where Woojin holds his hand until the rattling stops. A little girl reads to them while they wait, words rolling off her tongue like a song. It helps, somehow, and Jihoon decides it's not so bad.

(But the fear grips him—at the thought of his Mama and Papa dying, at the thought of him dying, at the thought of Woojin dying and maybe one of them dying _alone_ squeezing at his lungs and ribcage and closing in on him.

He doesn't talk about it.

If he talks about it, it only makes things real.)

A boy takes to reading instead one day, a shift from the girl whose voice is like a song, because the girl (the boy's little sister, he finds out) fell sick and now the boy's voice carries them, steady and easy despite the ground threatening to shake above them.

The boy's name is Daehwi, Jihoon learns—and it doesn't take long until he manages to loop himself into Jihoon and Woojin's lives, a recurring character plucked from the margins and kept safe within the confines of their hearts.

(It becomes them against the world, when it matters. When the world becomes bloated with corpses and stained with blood, when the red runs free through winding streets, when there's almost nothing left to save.

The best things in life come in threes, after all.)

,,,

The news arrives on a Tuesday.

_We are delighted to inform you..._ is burned into the back of Jihoon's eyelids, stark black ink whenever he closes his eyes.

Germany is losing somewhere.

"Papa is going too," Woojin says when he, Jihoon, and Daehwi are sitting outside the steps of the Hirsch house. "He says the army is desperate now, that they're getting anyone to go and fight in the war."

And Jihoon doesn't want his Papa to leave, when Russia is miles too many and too far. Because—fuck the war, or something like that. Jihoon hates it, hates the way it takes and takes and takes. For what? For jackshit, honestly.

He's tired.

"You don't want your Papa to leave too, right, Jihoon?" Woojin's fingers press gently into his arm—coaxing, comforting, afraid all in one. Daehwi leans his head on Jihoon's shoulder. Jihoon leans back, and lets Woojin take his hand and have the rest of his arm be collateral damage from the way he grips it. He lets them stay this way for a little bit.

So. He's tired. Heartsick.

When their fathers leave for Russia a week later, Woojin laces his arms around Jihoon and Jihoon watches as it takes everything in Woojin to rally for something as easy as a smile.

,,,

It doesn't make sense.

"Where is it?" Woojin calls out to him, waist-deep in the dark water of the river.

Jihoon squints, searching for cardboard and paper in the murk. The book passes by Woojin, and he works faster than Jihoon can open his mouth. Woojin's hands reach out to grab the book, all waterlogged and soggy. Woojin smiles, then, and though it took him this long to admit it, Jihoon loves that smile.

(But talking about it makes it real, so he doesn't.)

Jihoon gives Woojin a smile of his own, and waits until Woojin gets out of the water to hand his book over.

Woojin doesn't get out. He stays there, soaked and dopey, grinning at Jihoon like he's done something right.

"How about a kiss?"

_There it is._

"No."

Woojin gets out of the water, shoulders slumped but Jihoon can tell otherwise, can tell by the way Woojin sits next to him and looks at him. He can tell Woojin is in love with him, and maybe Jihoon is terrified of it, of that kind of love that borders between dreams and waking, the kind of love that ignores the war.

It doesn't make sense.

(Jihoon understands the war, knows where it's coming from and why it's happening, why it moves the way it does and he hates it, right down to the bombs that shake his core. But he can't comprehend  _this_ , the love that spills out and covers him whole, the love he didn't ask for but still receives.

He doesn't understand why he's starting to feel the same way.

_How about a kiss?_ )

\--

**just this once, just this once, let me love you as i am**

All is well that ends well after the war is over.

Their fathers come home, a reunion found in tears and tangled limbs, home feeling a lot more like _home_ than anything else.

Jihoon wipes Woojin's tears away and holds his hand, thumb running over his knuckles and reading him like braille. Woojin wraps his arms around Jihoon and Jihoon finds himself doing the same, burying his face in Woojin's chest.

(For the first time, things are making a little bit of sense.)

It's strange for the first few weeks after. The bombs don't threaten to spill out from the belly of a plane filled with them, Daehwi doesn't read to them in basements anymore (but he still reads to them, sometimes), and the weariness that held Jihoon's bones seeps away. No one says _heil Hitler_ anymore, and the Nazi flags are taken down.

Jihoon realizes he can slip on his shoes and not worry about a thing, not worry about death anymore, that something is no longer trapping his insides, a sliver of hope and happiness painted in shades of grey, blue, white.

It feels like a breath of fresh air. New life. A beginning.

Kind of like a phoenix, maybe.

(And Jihoon is determined to rise from the ashes.)

,,, 

Daehwi gets married to his (sort of) childhood sweetheart sometime during fall in 1950.

His name is Jinyoung, and it's a small, secret wedding, only open to family and a few friends. There are vows ( _"and I promise to love you for as long as I can, for as long as you'll let me"_ ), there's food, there's dancing.

There's Jihoon and Woojin.

There's love.

"I knew then I was willing to do what I could for you, because you make me happy," Jinyoung had said, and it reminds Jihoon of the book, and the river, and the realization. Daehwi cried, shoulders shaking in happiness and relief, all of the days closed up in the space of a dream, right here and right now in the aftermath of a war.

(There's Jinyoung and Daehwi.

There's love.)

Woojin is the best man, and he leads everyone into a barrage of noise, of yelling and clapping and hooting and shaking but in a good way, so different from the ground that quakes. And somehow, in the middle of all that, Woojin finds Jihoon, flashes him a snaggletooth, and for all the reasons in the world he can't exactly comprehend, Jihoon smiles back. 

Woojin catches him later, when Jihoon is trying to get more alcohol than he can hold; he puts his hands on Jihoon's hips and turns him around.

"How about a dance?"

A sweet smile makes its way to Jihoon's lips. His heart is in his throat. "Stick your dance."

"Maybe someday, then."

Woojin's face folds into a cunning little smirk and Jihoon blames the redness of his cheeks on the wine he ends up drinking.

,,,

"Aren't you a little too old to be scraping your knees like this?"

Jihoon had entered Woojin's room with a slight limp, muttering _happy birthday to me_. Woojin tucked his face into something of concern and worry, but not before mock rolling his eyes and saying, "You're an idiot."

"Well," Jihoon says, stupidly. "I guess."

Woojin looks like he's forcing himself not to roll his eyes. He takes gauze and antiseptic to a small gash on Jihoon's knee. He gives it a small pat when he finishes.

"There."

Jihoon scrunches his nose up. "It's my birthday."

Woojin flicks Jihoon's forehead, reveling in the way Jihoon lets out an _ow_. "Happy birthday, you _Saumensch_."

"It's my birthday," Jihoon says again. Woojin sits beside him on the floor.

"Yes. Twenty-six, right?"

Jihoon hums. "And you're not yet done."

"With what?" 

"Making it better."

"How do I?" Woojin asks.

Jihoon's heart is back in his throat. _It makes sense, doesn't it?_ This is what he tells himself.

It makes sense.

"How about a kiss?"

**Author's Note:**

> cries this is a mess i'm sorry;;; anyway hit me up on [twitter](http://twitter.com/pjhluv) if u want more 2park ramblings !


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